State of the Art Contractor: Electronic Price Books

Do you occasionally make bids wondering
whether or not you will make a
profit? You don't have to. The alternative
is to make consistent estimates,
and do job-cost analysis. Once your
estimates are "job-costed," you can
rely upon them to eliminate this
problem forever.
Webster's defines the work
"estimate" as "to judge or determine
roughly (the size, cost, requirements,
etc.); calculate approximately." Since
the fatality rate of small businesses in
America is in the mid-90th percentile,
with small construction
companies being at the upper end of
that scale, we need to very closely
study the problems resulting from the
"roughly" and "approximately" portions
of Webster's definition...lest we
become a statistic.
You may have heard the following:
"Buy a preprogrammed estimating program
and you'll